Some artists were careful to portray themselves as consummate professionals, adopting-at least in paint-the type of opulent clothing worn by their patrons or clients, but many painted themselves in their own attire, exhibiting a bohemian flare or a fondness for the fashionable.
In Part I, "Portraying Dress," Ribeiro examines the clothing in which artists chose to represent themselves, as well as their studio practices in terms of models, drapery, and clothing. Although the book primarily focuses on France and England, attention is also directed toward the northern Netherlands, Spain, and, briefly, Germany and Austria. The premise of Clothing Art is simple-the interactions among artists, their artwork, and clothing-yet Ribeiro explores this topic in varied ways: the artist's chosen attire in self-portraiture and the drapery, fabric, and clothes that the artist held ready for use when painting portraits artistic renderings of dress as expressive of national identity dress as a form of "play," with costume a favored form of apparel for portraits the artistic articulation of modern culture through fashion and, last, the direct engagement of artists in creating or influencing fashion. The occasional bit of gossip about a particular artist or her/his subject or model enlivens an already lively book.
Like most of its predecessors, Clothing Art is lavishly illustrated with full-color images and impressively researched, smoothly integrating fashion history with art, literature, culture, politics, and even military history, and moving seamlessly between contextualization and highly detailed readings of fashion ensembles as depicted in specific artworks. Professor Emeritus at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Aileen Ribeiro lays claim to an impressive body of work, including but not limited to Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1750–1789 (1984), Dress and Morality (1986), Fashion in the French Revolution (1988), The Art of Dress (1995), Ingres in Fashion (1999), Fashion and Fiction (2006), and Facing Beauty: Painted Women and Cosmetic Art (2011).
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